


on any other day

by Bobaleia



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Happy Ending, One Shot, Treat Fic, villain is misogynistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28184919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobaleia/pseuds/Bobaleia
Summary: Leia's not having the best day.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Leia Organa
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	on any other day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FettsOnTop (GTFF)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/gifts).



Leia had never thought she’d feel nostalgic for the cloying, obnoxious music she’d once heard in Jabba’s palace, but she’d take the musical stylings of Max Rebo over the strange, keening noises the lone musician in this tiny, filthy cantina was playing. Tatoonie, Leia had decided, wasn’t the place to go for musical entertainment.

Or really any sort of entertainment.

Which is why she needed to stay focused on the mission at hand, even if the male Twi’lek across from her wouldn’t stop mocking her every word.

“Look,” Leia says, steeling her nerves and her voice. Her left hand tightens around the blaster in her lap. She’s not the best shot with that hand, not yet, but she thinks she could get the job done, if she had to. “I need to buy a landspeeder. I’m told you have one. What’s the price?”

“A pretty little thing like you shouldn’t be thinking of driving anything…” he replies, each word hissed through jagged teeth, “or at least… anything with a motor.” He laughs at his own lewd joke, with a hand motion to match.

Leia resists the urge to vomit. She hates this. Hates the catina, the noise, the crowd that is watching her every move, the amount of paitence it takes to get through this conversation. She hates all of it, and finds herself longing for simpler times, like when she was fighting her way through a stormtrooper-filled hallway on the mission to Kuat. “Four hundred credits.” She plasters on her diplomatic smile, the one she’s been trained to wear, the one that feels more and more like a dress cut two sizes too small. But it’s the smile she knows she needs, in a situation like this. She’s a princess. She has to be nice. Even when she’d prefer to knock the Twi’lek upside his bald head.

“One night with me,” he retorts through jagged yellow teeth. “And you have a deal.”

Would it be the worst thing if she just shot him? Probably, given the fact the war was technically over these days, and it didn’t look good for a potential political leader to go around shooting Twi’leks, no matter how creepy and awful they were. It's a time of peace, now, she reminds herself. She has to play the games, now, even if she hates them. Even if the games waste an awful lot of time. “Six hundred.”

“One hundred… and you let me buy you a drink, my beautiful little sunspot.”

Leia takes a deep breath, and tries to remember her last pistol-shooting lesson. Or rather, the one before the last, since the last one ended with her and a certain man she’d rather not think about rolling around on the floor of the shooting range. “My final offer is seven hundred credits.” If she didn’t really need the trove of supplies hidden out in the Dune Sea for the New Republic, and needed this Twi’leks landspeeder, Leia would be long gone. But the trove would vanish soon, if sources were to be believed, and landspeeders were in short supply. It was supposed to be a simple mission, but as luck would have it, things went awry. Now, she has a map, a plan, but no transportation (after a certain incident involving Threepio, a bantha, and eighteen jawas) and she’s found herself rather out of time. After all, today is a day she certainly had other plans for how she wished to spend it. “No,” she says.

“Don’t be so hasty,” he argues. “You should know that I--”

“You should know,” a calm, cold voice cuts in, no less familiar for how muffled it sounds beneath a Mandalorian helmet, “you’re dealing with the Huttslayer herself.”

A flush burns on Leia’s cheeks, half-pride and half-annoyance at the interruption. She could have handled this herself. But Boba Fett simply stands there, one hand on the blaster at his hip, surveying the scene. The Twi’lek begins to cough and sputter. Around them, the crowded cantina whispers. Someone, in a low voice, says the title again. And the Twi'lek coughs. “Well, I…”

“You’ve heard the story, right?” Boba’s voice gives no emotion to his words, making them all the more chilling. “The way the so-called great Jabba died? It was the work of this woman. I’d think twice about crossing her if I were you.”

“I wasn’t trying-”

“You were trying to seduce me,” Leia snaps, standing up and thankfully fighting off her urge to use the blaster, a feat only accomplished by slapping both hands on the table, “which was not working, in the slightest. And yes, Murha, I am the Huttslayer.” The title isn’t one she’s ever truly been comfortable with, not when she’s spent most of her life attempting to be seen as a peacemaker, but in this moment, she claims it, because she is sick and tired of being belittled, hit on, and ignored. She’s tired of hives of scum and villainy, tired of dealing with people she’d rather shoot, and tired of _all_ of this. “I am the Huttslayer. I killed Jabba with my own hands. I would do it again in a heartbeat. So, perhaps, you should reconsider your words.”

Murha looks toward Boba Fett, who only inclines his head toward Leia, the motion clearly saying, _believe her._

Leia smiles, and this smile has no trace of diplomacy in it. Instead, it is pure, clear, _rage._ The kind that could destroy a city, or even level a solar system, if allowed to expand. The kind she’s been trained to keep at bay, and she does, most days.

But today isn’t most days.

Murha’s lekku twitch nervously.

Leia says, slowly, “do we have a deal?” Her words could slice through beskar, if she wanted them to. Given the way Boba Fett is standing, aware, alert, focused only on her, it’s clear he knows that too. He’s not one to have ever discounted the princess. He knows how strong she is, what she’s capable of. And that, Leia finds, is something she’s been missing, these long months away from the bounty hunter’s side.

“It’s yours. Have it. For free. I don’t care.” He stands up in a hurry, nearly knocking over the table. As he does so, Leia sinks back to her seat, collecting her calmness as well as the blaster she’d left untended.

As Murha departs, rambling all the while, Leia doesn’t argue, though certain political conventions would probably require her to at least offer the Twi’lek some money. She’s a bit sick of politics today. Because it’s not just any day, it’s her anniversary, and she’d really rather have been done with this whole weapons round up and instead been…

Sitting next to Boba Fett. Which she is now, and can sense, rather than see, that he’s smiling at her. It’s what she would have asked for, if they were in the position to ask for things of each other for events as small as anniversaries (and not as large as say, the Battle on Endor). She would have wanted this, ( albeit at perhaps a more romantic location) a small moment. That’s all. A few moments of sitting next to the man she’s fallen in love with, the one who never doubts her strength, who loves her for all she is and all she’s done.

Leia’s hand is still on the blaster, left on the bench to her left. But now, Boba’s gloved hand rests over hers. His gloves are not so thick that she can’t feel the warmth of his touch, a small echo of the warmth of skin she knows so intimately. His helmet isn’t so dense that her senses, attuned as they are, can’t hear the catch in his breath, the tiny indication that he feels something from this small moment of connection, this secret bit of togetherness they share in the terrible cantina.

“He was a fool for doubting you,” Boba says, his voice casual, or at least as casual as he can be.

“Most people in places like this do.” She knows how she looks, when she’s not wearing a disguise. When her delicate features aren’t hidden under a helmet and her bell-like voice not altered by technology. They see her as fragile and have no idea she is made of durasteel, forged and re-forged by every trial she’s survived and every battle she’s won. They have no idea that her biggest struggle is not the fear of speaking up in a place like this, but the fear that she will lose her temple and destroy the entire cantina.

“I never did,” Boba says.

Such a small reference to a hundred different meetings, each one a test, each one a time that a bit of a mask, either his or hers, fell away. “Why do you think you’re still alive?” Leia asks, a smaller, far more gentle smile on her face.

“I’m a lucky man,” he replies. His hand squeezes hers, just once, the smallest gesture with the biggest message. “I’ll see you tonight.”

It’s said clearly enough that the few denizens of the cantina who had whispered about her title, who had said _Huttslayer_ in scared whispers, now gasped.

Leia’s smile broadens. Good. Perhaps it’s time she stops hiding a little more of who she is. She is not just a princess, after all, but a warrior, a fighter, and… she is the woman Boba Fett loves. So, carefully, and yet, in full view of everyone, Leia kisses Boba Fett’s helmeted cheek, before confidently sashaying out of the cantina. She is a princess, and she is a Huttslayer, and she is so much more than either of those things.

And Boba Fett leans back in his chair, a smug, hidden smile on his face, his blaster in his lap, daring anyone to say anything about her.

He is a lucky man, and she is, he knows, one hell of a woman.


End file.
